Face/Off (1997)

reviewed by
Jeff Shooman

                                                FACE/OFF (1997)
                                       A Film Review by Jeff Shooman
                                         Copyright 1997 Jeff Shooman

First Impressions: Truly, a good action flick. John Woo is a master at pulling off an action scene, even if the movie did overexaggerate that last boat scene a tad bit. Performances by Nicolas Cage and John Travolta are truly remarkable -- Cage is in top form and Travolta continues to exhibit his great acting skills.

----------------------- FACE/OFF, looking at it all together, is truly a very good film. The action here never lets up for an instant but even more than the action, I loved the aspect of Nicolas Cage and John Travolta switching faces. I thought that this premise of the movie (it was basically, the whole movie) was "awesome" (awesome is in quotes because that has to be the most avoided word for a movie critic...it's the same as saying "that sucked.").

Meaningless commentary aside, Sean Archer (Travolta/Cage) is an FBI agent who dedicates his whole life to catching a psychopath by the name of Castor Troy (Cage/Travolta). Archer finally catches Troy and his equally evil brother. This sets off a series of events which leads Travolta's Archer to take the face of Cage's Troy. Through awful means, Cage's Troy then assumes the face of Travolta's Archer. The result is Nic Cage playing Sean Archer and John Travolta playing Castor Troy.

Here, Troy's one-dimensional, slick-"cajun-bizarre" antics are brilliantly portrayed by Mr. Travolta, who also played a psychopath in Mr. Woo's earlier BROKEN ARROW. However, Mr. Cage has the tougher part here: He must deviate from playing the wieldy sociopath to the family-loving Archer. He lives up to the task -- his performance is also nothing short of brilliant. Like in LEAVING LAS VEGAS, he plays the Archer part with a cheery sort of edge, and the audience knows he's smarter than everyone. That's the message that was supposed to be conveyed: Mission accomplished there.

The violent scenes in this film have led some people to denigrate movie critics for their immense liking of the film -- they claim that the violence in this film is dispicable, reprehensible, and a bunch of other long-worded-adjectives. I have to say however, that the scenes in this film, while gory, are poetically directed by Mr. Woo. Mr. Woo has such an eye for action that he even pulls off the first scene in the movie, which is disturbing as it is, with such finesse and flare that it makes you wonder whether or not he was "born" to do this. This first scene and the other action scenes, especially the church scene ("Weee...what a predicament") are masterfully directed. If there was an Oscar for Action, Mr. Woo would make a clean sweep.

The plot, inventive and unique, did suffer a bit at the end however from that extremely drawn out boat-scene. Again, this scene was truly remarkable, however, some of it probably unnecessary. This movie did not have to be two hours and twenty minutes long, so that last scene didn't help. But, it was there, and the audience member must appreciate the ability to pull this caliber of scene off. The action here was "awesome."

RATING:  *** out of ****
Questions?  Comments?
theshoooo@aol.com

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